Health Coverage Costs Up but Access is Historically
Level

January 23, 2008 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Data from the
Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) shows that even
though employers are shelling out a lot more for health
coverage, availability for workers has stayed mostly level in
recent years.

However, the biggest change is that the number of
employers providing retiree health benefits has suffered
a precipitous decline. EBRI said 12.7% of private-sector
employers covered retirees in their policies in 2007,
down sharply from the 21.6% which did so in 1997.

According to an EBRI news release,the cost of employment-based health benefits
doubled from 2000 to 2007, while wages and overall
inflation increased only 25%. The growth rate in the cost
of providing health benefits fell from 13.9% in 2003 to
6.1% in 2007, but continued to run double that of
workers’ earnings and the rate of overall inflation.

Workers also paid more for their share with average
premiums for employee-only coverage increasing from $28
to $52 per month from 2000 to 2006, an 86% hike. Average
family-coverage premiums increased from $138 to $248 per
month from 2000 to 2006, an 80% increase.

While workers’ premiums payments increased, their
percentage share in premium amounts decreased. According
to EBRI,workers paid an average of 20% of the premium for
employee-only coverage in 1993 while, by 2007, workers
were paying 16%.

Workers paid more than 30% of consumer health care
expenses out of pocket in the mid-1990s while, by 2005,
worker out-of-pocket spending as a percentage of total
consumer health care spending fell to 26%, EBRI
said.

The EBRI data also showed that the number of
covered employees is largely unchanged from the mid-1990s
and only down slightly from the late 1980s. In 2005, 74%
of workers who were not self-employed reported they were
eligible for health benefits through their own job, up
slightly from 73.6% in 1995.

Between 1994 and 2000, the percentage of workers
with health benefits through an employer held steady
between 73% and 75%. Since 2000, the percentage of
workers with health benefits has fallen to about
71%.

Finally, EBRI said, take-up rates for
employment-based benefits have fallen from nearly 88% in
1988 to 83.5% in 2005 among workers with benefits from
their own employer, but fewer than 5% of workers eligible
for health benefits were uninsured.